The book title Make the Impossible Possible (Bill Strickland, 2009) states, in principle, what Sam Young and Rona Tyler Young accomplished when they prevailed over seemingly impossible obstacles in Goochland County, Virginia. “Down in a valley where you can’t hear nobody pray,” they had to overcome the dangerous concomitants of Blacks being born in 1877 and 1883 respectively (12 and 18 years after the birth of the Ku Klux Klan, a mere 14 and 20 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued).
During the Youngs’ youth, Whites lynched Blacks without the perpetrators being arrested. Racial segregation flourished in all aspects of daily life. Blacks addressed Whites as “Mr. and Mrs.” while Whites referenced Black adults as “Boys, Girls, Uncles and Aunties.” School desegregation did not end in Virginia until 1959! In sum, institutionalized racism kept the Youngs in spaces reserved for “coloreds.”
Rona gave birth to nine children (daughters Ida, Grace, Dolly, Nancy and Minnie; and sons Jake, William, Nash and Zack). Midwives delivered the babies. The nine children’s initial nutrition was breast milk and, sooner than later, they were fed non-pasteurized milk from the one cow their family owned.
Remarkably, for first-generation out of slavery people, Sam and Rona built a home on their several acre farm where they sustained their family of 11 by being accomplished in the art of “making a way out of no way.” Their “enough is as good as a feast” small home was without indoor plumbing. Instead, they located a natural water source and built an approximately 3-feet-deep “Spring” where water bubbled up through sandy soil. For bathing, rain water was collected in barrels and folks bathed in tin tubs. Home-made lye soap was used for multiple cleansing purposes. Absent indoor plumbing, the family used an “Outhouse” where old crinkled pieces of newspapers and magazines served as “toilet tissue.” A wood-burning stove served as the “kitchen range.” A potbellied, log-burning stove provided heat during the winter months. Fuel consisted of the wood they chopped and, when limited funds permitted, kerosene for night lamps.
In Goochland where the Youngs spent their formative years, there were no drugstores or health clinics –at least not for Blacks. The closest hospital was in Richmond, more than 30 miles away, a several days round trip in a horse-drawn wagon. It took days for a doctor to make a home visit, if a White doctor was willing to do so. Children did not receive the 16 childhood vaccinations that are commonplace today. Sam and Rona had a “home recipe” for every affliction, e.g., Mustard Plasters for colds; a cloth soaked in vinegar water and placed on one’s head and feet to break a fever; an array of potions and salves laced with herbs designed to treat various “miseries;” and, of great importance to them, solemn prayer.
Some of their daughters’ dresses were made from flour sacks. Proceeds from the sale of farm products in Richmond were used to purchase clothing for family members. Just as folks ate “every part of the pig except the squeal,” there was no such thing as “old clothing,” but rather “hand-me-downs” were facts of life until the last recipient literally wore them out.
Absent refrigeration, salt cured pork and fish were normative. Additional meat was obtained by hunting deer, rabbits, raccoons, and squirrels. The family grew their vegetables; gathered wild Watercress; made biscuits and cornbread “from scratch;” and “put up,” in Mason jars, wild Blackberry preserves. There was no mythical daily diet of “southern fried chicken” because to kill the chickens would have been to kill their egg suppliers. Similarly, cows produced milk, not hamburgers and steaks.
As a housewife, Rona worked the “can’t see in the morning to can’t see at night” shift. Sam did the same on the farm and, when possible, he earned less than minimum wages working at a sawmill or the local railroad. Refusing to be torn asunder, they bonded their family with love and made it possible for their nine children to do what so many Black parents have wished ever since Africans were enslaved in America, i.e., “that their children would go further in life.”
A mere four generations later, with systemic racism still flourishing, Rona’s and Sam’s descendants have truly gone further. Geographically, their descendants have travelled the world. From the confines of Goochland, they have settled in states as varied as California, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Although Rona and Sam were denied public school educations, they have many descendants who graduated from various postsecondary schools and institutes as well as an array of distinguished colleges and universities. A number of them earned Masters and Doctoral degrees.
Rona and Sam were limited to “making a way out of no way” on a subsistence farm, but their descendants have worked in a plethora of capacities/professions including the following examples: administrative assistant; airline hostess; automotive industry; banking; beautician; architect; business; corporate executive; construction industry; cosmetology; credit union consultant; elected government official; data analyst; draftsman; engineer; entrepreneur; equity and social justice advocate; higher education administrator and professor; law; media production; members of various military branches; minister; NCAA athlete; nurse; occupational therapist; phlebotomist; professional athlete; public school teacher and administrator; public health professional; real estate; social work; U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement; and U.S. Postal Service.
When “my soul looks back and wonder, how I got over,” one foundational factor is that every summer my parents, Russell P. Daniel, Sr. and Grace C. Daniel sent me “down home” to live with my maternal grandparents Sam Young and Rona Tyler Young. “Down home” was a summer safe haven from the traps that destroyed Black children who inhabited public housing in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. “Down home,” my maternal grandparents, genuine “hidden figures,” also made clear the tremendous value of things such as creativity, commitment, education, faith, giving, hard work, perseverance, thrift, and love of family!
Jack L. Daniel
Co-founder, Freed Panther Society
Contributor, Pittsburgh Urban Media
Author, Negotiating a Historically White University While Black
February 14, 2022